Writer Shares War Stories

Reporter Tells Students About Its Horrors

February 21, 2003|By JOHNNY MASON; Courant Staff Writer

WINDSOR — As a Loomis Chaffee School student in the 1970s, Chris Hedges had a gift for testing the limits of authority.

In his senior year Hedges started the ``Grog,'' an underground newspaper with the logo of a drunken pelican over a stein. The paper was designed to irritate the powers-that-be, a role all off newspapers should have, Hedges said Thursday.

Some administrators were not as amused by the paper's content, Hedges said, adding that they put him on probation. Hedges was a scholarship student and often clashed with authority figures he considered elitist.

Hedges, who graduated in 1975, returned to Loomis Chaffee for the first time Thursday to speak to nearly 800 students and staff members. He is a reporter for the New York Times, and spent more than a decade as a war correspondent. Now Hedges is in the middle of a tour for his book ``War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning,'' a National Book Critics Award finalist for nonfiction in 2002.

Hedges told the audience that while at Loomis, he developed an early love for literature and Shakespeare, along with a knack for activism and bucking the establishment.

``Conformists don't make very good journalists. A journalist should always challenge those in power, whether it is at a prep school or Bosnia,'' said Hedges, 46.

His talk before a spellbound audience at his alma mater focused on military conflict, the possible U.S. military invasion of Iraq and news coverage of war, which he called intoxicating, addictive and enviable.

Hedges said the United States faces greater threats from North Korea and the al Qaeda terrorist network. He believes the Bush administration's fight against Iraq has more to do with American empire, oil and geography than a fear of Saddam Hussein. War against Iraq will not enhance the country's security, he said, and he sees nothing that justifies invading the country.

``I look at war as a poison. Just as a cancer patient has to ingest poison to fight off a disease, there are times when a society has to ingest the poison of war to survive,'' he said. ``I just think once you start playing around with war, you had better know what war is.''

Describing himself as idealist and not a pacifist, Hedges chose a journalism career over the ministry after souring on the church.

He was a member of the Times team that was honored with the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting, for the paper's coverage of global terrorism. Hedges also received the 2002 Amnesty International Global Award for Human Rights Journalism.

He currently works on the newspaper's investigative team, reporting on terrorist networks in the United States, Europe and the Middle East. Divorced and the father of two children, Hedges lives in New Jersey and also works as an adjunct professor of journalism at New York University.

Hedges had covered conflicts in Kosovo, Iran, Iraq, Israel and Central America. He said he was never been shot or injured, but has seen a lifetime's worth of death and atrocities.

He said he suffers from post-traumatic stress syndrome, which leaves him feeling distant and alienated when away from combat.

His war correspondent days ended in October 2000 in Kosovo. There, under heavy fire, he saw a youth shot to death 10 feet away from him, and he said he'll never forget it.

He was also taken prisoner by Iraqi Republican Guards during the Persian Gulf War and spent eight days in captivity.

``I paid a high price for the action that I've seen,'' he said.

Some faculty members relished their memories of a younger Hedges, a track star who always showed great promise as a writer and later graduated from Colgate University and Harvard Divinity School.

Bernita Sundquist, one of Hedges' English teachers at Loomis, followed her former student's war correspondent experiences, always impressed by his sharp descriptive writing style that placed readers in the middle of his scenes and action.

Sundquist said although Hedges choose journalism over the ministry, his religious beliefs and convictions have always been reflected in his writing.

``In a way he's still doing a ministry. He's still prophetic,'' she said. ``He is still looking at faith in the presence of destruction.''